Tag: Linguistics

A linguistics book for the rest of us

For several years now I’ve been looking for a book about linguistics that doesn’t assume I know diddly squat about the subject. I tried Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By.
I tried Pinker’s The Language Instinct. In desperation I got a copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Not one of them was what I wanted or needed.

I ordered a copy of Steve Kleinedler’s Is English Changing? because I follow Steve on Twitter and I enjoy his tweets. (I’ve found that following lexicographers is one of the smartest moves a editor can make.)  When it came today, I opened it and started reading. At the beginning, as one should.

And I shouted for joy.

THIS IS THE BOOK I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR.

It’s part of the Routledge Guides to Linguistics, which means it’s on the pricey side for its size (172 pages of actual text, plus front and back matter), but already I can tell you that if, like me, you want a totally accessible text about what linguistics is and how it affects YOU, it’s worth the US$30 and change. This snippet is what made me shout HOORAY:

“You will be asked to observe how you use language. These observations will help guide your understanding of basic linguistic concepts.”

FINALLY! A simple book, in plain language, for me and folks like me who are interested in the topic but are put off by academic texts and theoretical presentation. I want hands-on exercises that don’t use highfalutin terminology. I want explanations that don’t rely on lingo. (Linguistics. Lingo. Ha.)

“The language you speak is different than that of your parents, and of their parents, and so on, running backward through a multitude of generations. Indeed, the language you yourself speak is different from what you spoke last year, or 10 years ago.”

[insert GIF of owl’s head turning to face the viewer with the text O RLY? below it]

Sprinkled liberally throughout every chapter are boxes labeled “Something you can do!” I cheer every time I see one, because I CAN DO A THING AND THAT THING WILL HELP ME LEARN!

I haven’t gotten past the first chapter, because I’m squeeing and nodding and rereading and THIS IS THE BOOK! THIS ONE!

Thank you, Steve, for finally writing the book I’ve wanted for years.

Intimate Register in the Real World

In my ongoing efforts to bring the various registers of English to light, so that writers, editors, and readers may make use of the knowledge and understanding, I’m linking to a thread from Iva Cheung that quite literally exploded on Twitter over the last couple of days, including being picked up by Buzzfeed. (How exploded did it get? She hit her tweet limit. There is one.)

Here are dozens upon dozens of terms from people’s familiolects (words they use only with their family members, or “intimate register”) for people, places, things, actions … all kinds of words for all kinds of situations.

I love that so many of them come from toddlers’ mispronunciations.

“For N o’clock” or “by N o’clock?”

When you have an appointment, do you say you need to be there “for” or “by” the scheduled time?

I have always said “by.” I need to be at the office by nine o’clock.

My husband, however, has always said “for.” He needs to be at the office for eight o’clock.

The first time I heard it, I mentally stopped, stock still. “For?” Surely you mean “by,” right? I didn’t ask, though. I just made a note and kept listening. Sure enough, that’s the phrasing he always uses. He was born in MA and grew up in RI. He’s not British, which this usage would seem to suggest (it’s “exclusively” BrE, according to Algeo’s British or American English?”: A handbook of word and grammar patterns).

I’ll suggest it may be less “exclusive” than his research led him to report. He states “0 iptmw in CIC texts” for AmE. In English (AmE, precisely), that means zero instances per ten million words in the Cambridge International Corpus. I can swear to the existence of three American English native speakers (my husband and his two daughters) who use “for” where I use “by” in this particular construction. Is it a spoken AmE thing, but not a written AmE thing?

I’d love to hear from linguists who have experience with this wording. Is it as “exclusive” as Algeo says? Or are there other AmE speakers (perhaps from New England, or perhaps only in that little bit of MA and RI) who use this? I’m a corn-fed Midwestern gal of Frisian extraction. This British thing . . . I didn’t grow up with this.

Let’s chew some GUM.

Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics. And we’ll throw in Syntax and Style for good measure. And no, those won’t be capped for the entire post. That’d be silly. First use is plenty, because now you readers know what the Important Terms are going to be for the rest of this discussion. (That’s a style thing. You’ll learn more about it later.)

We can’t write or speak—we can’t use language—without at least four of those things. Grammar tells us the rules that explain how our words work. It tells us about nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, and more. It tells us what we need for a complete sentence (a subject and a verb). It tells us how to form a question. Grammar is a set of rules. Not suggestions, not guidelines. Rules. And you know what? Most of us learn these rules by osmosis. We absorb them from hearing other people talk; we are exposed to them when we read. (Sadly, we may read poorly-written material and learn the wrong things, but that’s another post for another time.) Continue reading “Let’s chew some GUM.” →